4

Developing Your Career Plan

Alisa Cohn

You’ve spent a lot of time in introspection and exploration. In the last three chapters, you were a detective, uncovering the clues of who you are and what would be a good fit for you. Now you get to be a navigator—taking all the data and creating a map to guide you on your next steps on the career journey.

You will synthesize the data to form one (or two) pretty good targets of where you might want to go. Then you will begin to narrow down the options to home in on what companies and roles you are going to target.

You may want to leave your existing workplace or find something else within your current environment. You may be a first-time job entrant, midcareer, or even in the later stages of your career. Whatever your situation, this process will help you figure out where you should point yourself and what your next steps should be.

Tools for Getting Started

As with anything, the hardest part of the journey is getting started, so let’s begin! The best way to get started is to collect what you’ve already discovered about yourself. So far, you identified your strengths and skills, learned something about your interests and personality type, and identified your core values.

Now let’s explore how these areas come together to help you decide what actual roles you want to target. You will find it extremely helpful to keep your notes, documents, and tools all in one place: Keep everything in a folder on your computer, use a notebook if that works better for you, or use one of the many websites that are designed to help you stay organized. Spending a little time up front getting organized will pay enormous dividends as you go forward.

Keep a Job Journal

Another useful tool that was mentioned in earlier chapters is a job journal, which is an electronic document or a paper notebook that gives you space to jot down ideas and keep track of insights, words and phrases, contacts, and anything else that comes to mind as you move forward in your process. Depending on your preferences, you can set it up in a loose-leaf or spiral-bound notebook or use a free tool like Evernote (www.evernote.com) or JibberJobber (www.jibberjobber.com) to keep track of your insights on each topic. You can set up your job journal using the following eight sections, or create your own:

•  Personal inventory tool: Consolidate your insights and ideas using the Personal Inventory Tool (Appendix B). This will help you keep track of the most important things you are learning.

•  Learning: Write down what you learn through informational interviewing, as well as initial inclinations about what kind of job you want to target and what else you want to explore.

•  Workplace environments: Note your thoughts on workplace environments, especially if you are still trying to decide what you want to target: large companies or small, established companies or startups, or nonprofit or for profit. As you visit or learn about different environments, keep your reflections here.

•  Exercises: Keep track of your self-observation exercises and introspection.

•  Networking: Organize your networking and contacts.

•  Job search strategy: Write down the big picture of your goals and how you plan to organize yourself to reach them.

•  Daily schedule: Keep your daily and weekly schedule here to stay organized.

•  Goals and lists: Keep track of your progress. List your daily and weekly to-dos so you can check them off. Write down your areas of focus for the day or the week. This helps you continue your learning process, keep track of your insights, and organize how you use your time.

Identifying Your Preferences

In chapters 1 and 2, you took an inventory of your personality traits, interests, and skills to determine what you have to offer. In chapter 3, you identified your values and what was important to you in a work environment. Now it’s time to decide which skills you most like to use and where you’d most like to focus your efforts in looking for a job. This will help you describe the attributes of an ideal job, as well as the types of jobs you would like to avoid.

Complete a preference grid (Table 4-1) to help you clarify the skills you most enjoy using and the type of environment in which you do your best work. This tool will also remind you what areas to avoid, which is helpful for finding a job that is a good fit.

Table 4-1. Preference Grid

Skills

For the skills section of the preference grid, take a look at the skills you’ve listed in your personal inventory. For each skill, ask yourself if you’d like to use it every day. Write down the skills that you love in the yes column. Most people also possess skills they don’t enjoy using—identify the skills you truly dislike in the no column. Skills that you don’t mind using, but wouldn’t want to do all day, should receive a maybe. In your ideal job, you would use your preferred skills 100 percent of the time. However, because most jobs include some work that is less appealing to you, aim for a job that allows you to use your favorite skills 70 to 80 percent of the time and your maybe skills the rest of the time.

Industry or Sector

The next section of the preference grid relates to the industries or sectors in which you would most like to ply your trade. If you believe you can work in any industry, think about whether you would enjoy manufacturing, service, government, or nonprofit environments. In chapter 1, you uncovered some clues about the types of companies and industries you may enjoy based on your personality type and interests. Think about the types of people you like being with, the subjects that fascinate you most, and what you like and don’t like about where you’ve worked so far. Your interests and preferences are clues to the type of industry and environment that best suits you.

Environmental Factors

The last area of your preference grid is the environment: company size, corporate culture, physical location, length of commute, type of manager, salary level, and so forth. You should include all the work environment factors that are important to you and categorize them based on your true preferences. You also unearthed some clues about the type of work environment that suits you best in chapters 1 and 3. Be honest with yourself about what you can and cannot tolerate in a workplace. For some, a commute longer than 30 minutes is intolerable, while others use the travel time as a way to unwind and separate from their workday.

Once you’ve completed your preference grid, the items in your yes column should describe your ideal job. Share your preference grid with trusted friends and colleagues who will help you vet, reinforce, and challenge your ideas to give you more clarity and confidence to move forward.

Determining the Right Job for You

Determining the right job is an iterative process. You learn about yourself, explore various environments and opportunities, talk to people, read, and repeat. Over time you begin to get a picture of areas you want to explore and target.

Start by creating a mission statement for your job search. This is a way to incorporate what you know about yourself and apply it to what you’d like to do. In chapter 3, you created personal purpose statements that you could identify with. Choose one or two now and see if you can craft a mission statement by adding some of your key skills, strengths, and the workplace values that are important to you. Try drafting a mission statement now. Your mission statement should be inspirational and something to which you aspire.

For example, one of my clients, Dan, wanted to transition to something completely new. He wrote this mission statement:

Granted, this does not point him to a specific job, like marketing or finance; rather, it is a bigger picture statement that can serve as a filter for what he is seeking.

After reflecting on your strengths and values and the kind of culture you want to be a part of, you probably have some inkling of where to point yourself to find your next position. Try drafting a mission statement now and place it at the top of the Personal Inventory Tool in Appendix B. Still not sure what you want? Try some of these exercises to gain further insights.

Interview Yourself

Ask yourself the following questions to learn more about yourself. Don’t edit as you go; feel free to answer them out loud and record the interview. If you feel silly, ask a friend to do it. After you’re done, take time to reflect on what you learned about yourself. Jot your insights down into your job journal and take another look at your preference grid.

•  What have you accomplished that you are most proud of?

– Chapter 2 suggested making a list of accomplishments and writing brief stories about some of them; if you haven’t already, jot down a list of accomplishments now.

•  What kind of challenges do you most enjoy overcoming?

•  Describe the colleagues you have enjoyed working with the most.

•  What kinds of environments do you thrive in? What environments have not worked well for you?

– Chapters 1 and 3 provided some guidance on the types of environments that most appeal to various personality types. If you found any clues there, jot them down in your job journal.

•  Look at the following related workplaces. Which environments speak more to you?

– large company or small company

– for profit or nonprofit

– established company or startup

– fast paced or moderate paced

– “execution culture” or “family culture”

•  How important are your physical surroundings?

•  Do you want to go to the same place and office every time, or do you want to be more mobile, remote, or flexible?

Jot down any new insights you gained from this exercise in your job journal.

Creating an Advisory Board

If you’re struggling to do this alone, another exercise that can be helpful involves asking a few of your friends and colleagues to become members of your advisory board. Find a trusted, insightful friend or mentor, or invite a small set of close friends or colleagues to dinner to be a part of your personal advisory board. Share with the group what you found out about yourself in your information gathering phase, and show them your personal inventory or your preference grid. Then ask them what type of job or environment comes to mind and what suggestions they have for you about where to point yourself. Ask probing questions about how they view you and encourage them to talk among themselves about you as if you were not in the room. Take notes. (Pro tip about advisory boards: When you serve pizza they stay longer.)

Here’s an example of how a personal advisory board can help:

Experiment and Research

Even after this exploration, you may still need to spend time refining what job or career you want to target. At this point, follow your curiosity and use targeted experiments, which give you an opportunity to try something in a small way without jumping in with both feet. It’s usually not exactly the same, but it comes close enough to give you a sense. When you conduct a targeted experiment, it’s important to have specific goals about what you want to get out of it. Be clear and specific and write your goals down to remind you why you’re doing it.

Talk to people, starting with people you feel comfortable and safe with. Ask about what they do and what their day-to-day entails. Go into their office so you can see what it’s like, and even shadow them for a few hours if you can. It might be weird if you showed up at a corporate meeting, but you could sit with them at their computer and have them take you on a tour. Find out what documents they’re working on and what they are for. Whom do they interact with all day? Does that appeal to you? Write your insights and key takeaways in your job journal.

Another way to experiment is to find short versions of things you want to do. Take Jill, for example. She was a classically trained musician, a brilliant violinist, and professor of music, but wanted to transition her career. After talking to a lot of people, she thought that consulting would be a great next step. Because it would be a stretch to get hired into a consulting firm from where she was, Jill thought she should find consulting firms focused on academia and sell her music skills as “creative thinking.” She was also contemplating going to business school to formally learn business skills.

These are good ideas, but does she even know what consulting is? Jill wanted to find a way to explore consulting before diving in. After some searching, she found that her alumni organization had a group that formed small teams of volunteer consultants for nonprofits, so she joined a team that was working on developing a strategic plan. She wanted to try out consulting and gain one or two specific skills that would help her in her transition away from music and academia and into the business world. She pushed herself out of her comfort zone to work with a team member on the financial projections. It wasn’t easy, but she learned a lot and found that she had an aptitude for strategy and numbers. Ultimately, after a few more volunteer engagements, Jill decided to go to business school feeling very confident in her abilities and the path it would lead her down.

To summarize so far: A starting point for career success is what you enjoy and what you’re good at. It’s also finding a match for your values and a cultural fit. When you think about this, you can brainstorm and use an advisory board to get an outside view of how the world sees you. You can start experimenting to test if you will like certain fields or not.

But this is still not sufficient. Career success is not just about what you enjoy and what you’re good at; it’s also important to consider workforce trends. Wise decision makers think about “picking a good wave”—a field or industry that is going to grow with you. As you think about the industry you want to target, take into account external waves.

Watch for Waves

Waves can be economic, demographic (the baby boom), technological (the rapid changes wrought by information technology), or environmental (climate change). They influence both what choices are available and the rewards people get from choosing them.

For example, a current wave is that the U.S. population is aging. Getting involved in services for the elderly may very well be a good “wave choice.” Alternatively, print journalism is dying. Starting a career in print journalism means choosing a soft wave that may not make it to shore.

Scan the environment around you to identify good waves that won’t leave you behind. Here are some ways to determine key trends:

•  Pull out three to five news sources (magazines, blogs, or newspapers) you’ve never read before. Read them for a month and see what resources you gain.

•  Review occupational data on the projected growth and salaries in existing and emerging occupations and fields. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov/ooh) and the Department of Labor (www.dol.gov) are two good resources.

•  Ask people in different fields what they think the key future trends are.

•  Ask people in your own field to name important future trends.

Create a Career Plan

Now it’s time to articulate your career plan. This plan should evolve over time, so don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time. Appendix E is a career plan template you can use to articulate the target for your next position. Include the types of skills you want to use, as well as the location, industry, and type of environment you’d most enjoy working in. Use your Personal Inventory Tool (Appendix B) and preference grid (Table 4-1) to help remind you of the key factors. Include the:

•  common title for the type of position you are targeting

•  top skills you’d like to use

•  industry preference(s)

•  preferred location

•  important key environmental factors

•  target salary.

Now when you’re asked what type of position you are looking for, you should be able to articulate a career objective or target. A career objective could sound like this:

Or it could sound like this:

Now it’s your turn. Create a career objective from the information in your career plan. Make it specific enough that it paints a clear picture of type of position you are looking for.

Once you have drafted your career target, jot down a few next steps that will get you closer to that goal and give yourself a deadline to accomplish them. Next steps could include revising your resume, setting up networking meetings, or researching target companies.

Target Companies

Before we move on to developing a search strategy, a few words about identifying target companies. A key part of your search process will include targeting companies you believe are a good fit. Use what you determined about yourself in chapters 1-3 as parameters to narrow down the types of companies that suit you best. Then start creating a list of companies that meet your criteria.

You can find target companies in a number of ways, including ZoomInfo (www.zoominfo.com; sign up for the community edition), the ReferenceUSA database, LinkedIn company pages, and Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com). Chapters 3 and 10 contain additional guidance on how to do company research. Appendix E contains a table that will help you get started with your target company list.

Create Your Search Strategy

Congratulations, now that you have drafted a career plan and identified some next steps, it’s time to act! So, what should you do next?

If you are in an active job search, lay out your strategy, on paper or online, whatever works best for you. A search strategy will help you make the best use of your time, pace yourself, and bolster your spirits when you’re down. Use the career plan in Appendix E or your job journal to identify your next steps and the timelines by which you want to achieve those goals.

Now think about the various activities that you will do to achieve that goal:

•  research

•  working with recruiters

•  informational interviews

•  networking

•  looking for open listings on company websites

•  attending industry events

•  job fairs

•  building your skills and knowledge

•  building your brand as an expert

•  honing your resume.

Everyone has a different amount of time to devote to a job search. If you don’t have a full-time job that means you have more time to job search than if you do. Everyone has various outside commitments—family, community, volunteering, school—so it’s important to set a realistic plan for yourself based on your own situation. It’s also important to emphasize this process and devote time to it if it’s important to you.

Looking Without a Full-Time Job

If you are job searching without a current job full time, your day could look like this:

9:00–Contact people: Use the first 90 minutes of the morning to respond to key people and follow up with things you committed to do (send an article, make an introduction). This is also a good time to network with new contacts and to update old contacts on what you’ve been up to.

10:30–Morning meetings: This is a good time to schedule morning coffee meetings. You probably got a few things done in the morning, so you’ll feel productive, which will help you come across as more confident. Coffee meetings give you time to recharge with caffeine and interact with other people. They’re also a reason to get dressed (some people need that!) and get you outside so you don’t feel cooped up all day in front of your computer and phone. You can also use this time to do some online research, work on social media, or do other activities to build your brand as an expert. Note: This is not an excuse to waste time on Facebook or Twitter!

11:30–Personal errands or break: Don’t forget to do your personal errands. Just because you’re looking for a job full time doesn’t mean life stops—you still need to go to the dry cleaner or pick up aspirin and milk. If you are married, use this time to get spouse points for taking care of household chores.

12:30–Lunch meetings: Schedule a lunch with someone if you can. Meet up with former colleagues, people from industry associations you want to get to know better, or new introductions from people in your network. In addition to being a great way to meet, having lunch with someone on a regular basis reinforces your being out in the world rather than cooped up inside. This will give you fresh perspective and help keep your spirits up.

2:00–Research and applications: Afternoons tend to be a bit lower energy, so use this time for quiet research and applying for positions that fit the criteria you identified on your preference grid. Be selective and only apply to well-targeted positions (see chapter 8 for more guidance on this topic). Research industry trends, learn something that you think is important, or write a few blog posts or do something else to set yourself up as an industry expert. This is also great time to research specific companies and to look through LinkedIn for new contacts to network with.

4:00–Strong finish: End the day with something you know will give you a high. This may be having a final networking call or meeting, reading a set of blogs in your industry you know you’ll enjoy, or anything else you know will give you a sense of accomplishment.

4:30–Prepare for tomorrow: Make a detailed plan for tomorrow. This helps you think through the specifics of your highest-value activities and ensures that you can have a fast start in the morning.

New to the Workforce

If you are just out of school and this is your first job, it’s especially important that you make sure you have a clear schedule to structure yourself. You should add to your activities list specific networking meetings with older successful people to cultivate as mentors. You should also add extra time for research, especially if you don’t know much about workplace environments. Another option is spending one day each week interning or volunteering somewhere to help you gain more skills, test if you like something or not, demonstrate value, and build your network. This is the easiest time in your life to do this, so it’s a great investment of your time if you are able to.

Parent Re-Entering the Job Market

If you are a parent who is re-entering the job market, a structured schedule will help you feel more in control and support your progress. You also should add more time to research current conditions in the job market. For example, in the past 10 years, work environments have become more mobile, with people working remotely from all over the world. And, open-plan workspaces have also become much common.

Make room in your day for filling in knowledge and experience gaps. This is especially important if you are transitioning to a new industry. Knowledge gaps can be easy to fill by reading, self-study, online courses, or short courses (see chapter 14 for resources on professional development). Experience gaps are harder to fill, so consider getting a mini internship or volunteering. Those are two quick ways to gain experience, keep your resume fresh, and signal motivation to potential employers (see chapters 12 and 13 for more suggestions on gaining experience or preparing for a career change).

Working While You Look for Work

If you have a job, you have to be strategic about how to use your time to make sure you are having the highest impact. You may be able to do some but not all of the activities laid out here. Pick or create the ones that work best for you and execute them consistently.

•  Early morning: Use this time to network—email responses and follow-ups to your contacts.

•  Breakfast or coffee meeting: If you can squeeze in coffee or breakfast before work, that can be the easiest time for everyone to meet.

•  Lunch: Meeting someone for lunch is a great use of your time.

•  Two 15-minute activities a day: Plan in advance various 15-minute activities you can do throughout the day. These can include creating a list of companies you want to target or discreetly researching a company or industry you are interested in.

•  After work: Pick one or two evenings a week to work on your job search and apply to positions online. You might use this time for dinner and drinks networking or industry events, which often happen in the evening. If you are trying to transition to a new industry, you could use this time to take a “short-course” education program. Only go to general networking events if they are very targeted or you can use them to meet up with people you already know. Most people find these events hard to navigate and, often, a bit demoralizing. You need to keep your spirits up.

Pitfalls to Avoid

Avoid falling prey to these common job search pitfalls:

•  Not knowing what to do: By far the biggest time waster is simply procrastinating because you don’t know what to do. Having a detailed plan with specific action steps is the key.

•  Not feeling like doing it: Who feels like doing anything? Monitor your self-talk and use it to motivate yourself. Remind yourself that you don’t have to finish, you just have to start. Give yourself 20 minutes to work on a tough task before you throw in the towel. Do the hard stuff first thing in the morning when you have the most energy. Keep the bigger picture in mind: While it’s true that writing cover letters is tedious and even meeting someone for coffee can be stressful if you don’t enjoy networking, remember that you will have a satisfying and interesting career if you just keep going (and if you need to support yourself financially then you better get going).

•  Time wasters: Stop rationalizing using all your time to go to a movie or watch television. Again, a plan helps here. Use these kinds of treats as a reward: If I get my work done on Monday and Tuesday, I’ll treat myself by working for a half day on Wednesday. Then I’ll spend the rest of the day having lunch with a friend and going to a movie or some other activity that I enjoy for its own sake.

Tracking Your Progress

Tracking your progress can be hard because the job-seeking process is not a linear one. You can’t control the outcome, but you can absolutely control your behavior—the things you do to lead you to your goal. Keeping track of those elements and consistently executing your process day to day and week by week will help you stay on track, lead you to your goals, and make you feel better.

Each week you should have a combination of activities that will help you get to where you’re going. Your specific goals will change based on which stage of the job search process you are in. For example:

•  If you are still figuring out what you want, plan to spend five to eight hours a week in reflective exercises or reading books that help you think about yourself.

•  If you are narrowing down options, plan to spend two to three hours a week researching various industries.

•  If you are networking and doing informational interviews, keep track of the number of contacts you meet and referrals you get to expand your network. Pick a number of contacts per week that feels comfortable for you. As a starting point, try to meet five to 10 contacts and get three to five referrals a week.

Keep track of your online applications and record which ones resulted in a phone call or interview. What is your response rate? Many people have response rates in the single digits. If you are only applying to positions that are a good fit (and following the advice in chapter 8), you should have a better response rate (20 percent or higher).

Building Resilience

Job searches are circuitous and can be long slogs, with plenty of detours and no shortcuts. Just when you think you are making progress, you have a big setback. You need to find ways to keep your spirits up and keep going even when the going gets tough. Building resilience takes some effort, but it’s worth it. There are a few ways to build resilience.

First, get your mindset right. Some people get upset when they have lulls in their job search simply because they didn’t expect them—expect them. This is not pessimistic; it is realistic. There will always be times when someone won’t get back to you, networking meetings won’t go well, your resume looks terrible, and you don’t know what to do next. You will get rejected from jobs, you won’t get the interview, and it will take longer than it should. Make peace with all this by recognizing in advance that setbacks are normal. Strategize and plan for ways to remember this and comfort yourself when you are in the middle of a setback. You can write down your top ideas in your job journal to remind yourself of them.

The second important tool is to have a support group around you. This can be a formal or informal group of other job seekers. It should also include your friends and family. People are much more resilient when they have support from others.

Reframing setbacks is another important tool. When you are disappointed by something, instead of getting upset (which is natural), ask yourself, “What can I learn from this?” You can also experiment with challenging yourself with the question, “Why is this actually the best thing for me?”

Set up small wins. Are you better at research than writing cover letters? Do some research before starting your cover letter to prime your mind for success. Then do some research after spending time on the cover letter to reward yourself. Prefer networking? Schedule one to three networking meetings a day. Fill your time with valuable activities that you actually enjoy—there are many activities to choose from. Emphasize the ones you like more and use them strategically to help you feel successful. The momentum you gain from that will help carry you forward.

Of course, there are some things you simply have to do whether or not you like them. Some people don’t like reaching out to others and networking. Others enjoy meeting people, but find research tedious. Some people find that doing the tasks they don’t like first thing in the morning is helpful. “Time bounding” undesirable tasks—doing them for only a prescribed amount of time—is also a good strategy. This helps you recognize that you only have to do the task for a finite amount of time, and then you can reward yourself after that.

Even when you are down—especially when you are down—having a strong plan guides you to take specific actions and steps forward. Action leads to progress and progress is what makes you feel better.

Your Long-Term Career Plan

Now, imagine for a moment that you’re done. You’ve landed a great new position, had your first day, and all is well. You have knowledge and information, a sense of strategy, and a very active network. Make sure you remember to maintain and nourish this asset that you have spent months building to ensure long-term career success.

Your career is a long-term journey. Every six months or so it’s helpful to step back and take stock with some reflection questions:

•  Am I on the right track? Why or why not?

•  What is the next step (or two) in my career? What skills and experiences do I need to build to get there? Whom do I need to support me?

•  What is the state of my network? Are there some people I haven’t connected with in a while? What’s the best way to reconnect with them?

•  What are some trends in my industry that are going to influence my role?

•  What workforce trends do I see coming up that I need to recognize and possibly plan for?

Summary

Keeping up with your self-reflection and industry insights will help you notice very quickly if you need to make a course correction. Maintaining this outlook will help you keep your eye out for and pursue new opportunities in your current workplace that you may have missed in the past.

Your career journey is a lifelong process. Use the tools in this chapter and the rest of the book to help you make good choices now and open up great opportunities in the future.